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Comment by akulbe | Hacker News Reader

Hmm... I think I disagree with this approach. This assumes $USER already knows what your service is about, before they get to your home page. If that's true, then no problem. If not, how do they know what they're signing up for? How do they know what Housefed even is?

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My assumption is if you came to my site, you obviously were intrigued enough by the service to visit. I want to put as little between you & that service as possible. Without taking a signup out all together, this as close as I can get.

People use webapps because they provide some kind of value to them. Housefed.com doesn't tell me what value it provides, so why would I waste my time creating a new password and a new spam-email on absolutely pure unfounded speculation? I actually have negative sentiment towards it now for appearing so arrogant as to think it doesn't have to explain itself.

Really, how does having an explanation hurt? You have nothing backing up your over-the-top linkbait claims in your post.

You're actually killing part of your virality, because part of how word-of-mouth works is when you hear about something offhand. You aren't always being directly pitched, and you don't always have a chance to press for specifics. For example, if a service is mentioned in someone's Twitter feed, or if I hear that one of my competitors, enemies, or heroes is using it, then I might have no idea what it is for and no better way of finding out than going to the home page. In that case what's standing between me and signing up is ignorance, and you're leaving that barrier in place. There's nobody out there so similar to me that it's worth my while to sign up for any web site they use, but there are a lot of people out there with enough taste and intelligence that if they use your service AND I'm interested in the same kind of service, then I'll sign up.

Ok, so we all read his blog post and checkout his homepage -- which is a lot of referrals but not a lot of signups because none of us have a clue what the service is.

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